I had no idea Travis was on the pitch till two mins ago

Really? So far in his three possessions in their half he’s had the turning circle of an oil tanker, taken umpteen touches and created nothing. Bucko bailed him out of his latest run into a crowd.

Rothwell showing why no-one better than us will take him: misplaces simple passes too often and cannot defend.

I thought it was Terry Garbutt who went along with Field

I think you are selling Ben short. For a young lad to take himself off to a different continent, not knowing the language or any of the other players or staff, risking ridicule, ostracism, loneliness etc takes terrific confidence and self-belief. If he didn’t have those within him before going, he wouldn’t have gone.

Very interesting, thanks for posting. As I love a good counter-narrative, I’ll put this out there. Everyone has been interpreting Tony’s off-the-cuff comment years ago about integrity and walking away from a fan’s perspective: results and league position. But we also know Mowbray is an old-school football romantic, brought up in the 70s, he sees clubs through a misty-eyed lens. IF things are as bad behind the scenes as McCarthy implies, then maybe the honourable thing to do for a football romantic like Mowbray is hang on in there and try and mitigate the damage being wrought to a famous old club. Maybe that’s why he signs players he knows and brings in support staff up to and including the CEO who he has worked with before because he knows they aren’t one of “them”. Maybe he thinks he can reason with the owners enough to at least make things less worse than otherwise and sees walking away as abandoning the club to its fate. No idea if any of this is true, but I’d argue it fits the known facts at least as well as the popular narrative that he’s an amoral, lying pension-maximiser.

Gallagher showed one of his main weaknesses today, a lack of anticipation. He never attacks the space where the ball will be most scorable from, both his chances with better movement to the point of maximum opportunity would’ve been simple - Dack is brilliant at that. Sam just reacts.

Bit of an over-reaction by some I feel. Yes it was cheek-clenching at the end but we did restrict them to two chances from open play the whole game, which I’d always settle for away from home.

Personally I think we should’ve brought Rothwell on at some stage

Bucko/Ben 2 Derby 0 Back 4 solid, Buckley as many assists in 25 mins as Nyambe gets in a season, Travis and Johnson terrific, Rothwell spent the first half hour not so much playing in the hole but being the actual hole, Ben two great poacher’s goals, Gallagher still a donkey, Dolan ephemeral.

Dack is good at using his fat arse to shield the ball with his back to the goal, but he comes deep a lot too. He doesn’t do the Rothwell runs because he doesn’t need to, he’s a much better passer. And his forte is arriving late in the right place to finish off goals, something Rothwell ought to be equally good at but isn’t.

Because maybe they didn’t want to, or could afford to put £32 million in all at once.

Wednesday got to the FA Cup final that year so must’ve been pretty strong. Many will be surprised to see that away fans used to be housed in the Blackburn End

Didn’t there used to be a much higher ratio of visitors to posters?

I get the impression having seen £20 million turn into most likely nothing with the Dack situation, that has put the owners off long lucrative contracts to protect future transfer values.

Classic picture. Johnson late to the party, Joe watching how it’s done and a four-legged CH with unnaturally long arms unable to do anything other than unsight the keeper.

If he’s in demand, someone will offer a fee in Jan rather than risk not getting him in Summer. Personally, I think his injury record and lack of goals/assists will put some off. Assuming he stays injury-free…

I think it’s mistake to assume that players share the same motivations and opinions as fans. Each of Lenihan, Rothwell and Nyambe will have their own reasons for holding out thus far, but I’d be amazed if high on all their lists is wanting to get away from Mowbray. Lenihan - first name on the team sheet if fit in a Championship club. His next contract - combo of wage and length - will define the rest of his career income. I’m guessing he sees this is the one to make the jump from ex-youth player to going-rate player. Maybe he thinks if the Scottish gargoyle can be at a club that bounces from Championship to Prem and back again then so can he. Rothwell, now picked every game in what he says is his favoured position. Nearly 27, so this contract is now or never for him. Trouble is he does two things really well - running with the ball and set pieces - which just about contribute enough goals between them, but he’s rubbish defensively. So I’m not sure anyone better than us will play him as a starter in centre mid. He’ll no doubt shine running at the Arbroath defense and maybe if Rangers pay him enough that’s what he wants. Nyambe, again does two things really well: running past players and stopping them running past him. But, against that he has an injury record and what I think is one weakness - spacial awareness. It’s not like we don’t concede goals from his side, but the ones we do aren’t where someone got past him, it’s the ones who avoid him. Too often, he has no idea where his man is. Equally, he has no idea where our men are when he gets into promising positions. You can certainly coach a player to look more - apparently that’s all Messi does for the first ten mins of every game - but looking isn’t seeing. However, the manager clearly doesn’t rate him and his strengths are top notch so I think offers will come in and he should accept the best one. Bottom line: I think we’ll meet Lenihan’s demands, sell Nyambe in Jan, and Rothwell will run his contract out and end up nowhere better.

But only one can get him, so there would be competition.

I think his point was there have been no bids for Nyambe at any stage.

Whereas Rothwell, a much better central midfielder, stemmed the flow in the second half, got in tackles, put his foot on the ball, slowed things down, sprayed passes around…

If you think Rothwell will ever be a Premier League regular, I’ll have what you’re drinking.

If Rothwell is such a misused genius then I wonder why, as his contract winds down, there hasn’t been an Adam Armstrong rush for his services beyond a Nixon flyer about a move to Rangers? And as to all these chances he creates that get fluffed, he is the main culprit - pisspoor shot for the most part. An average of two goals a season for an attacking midfielder is awful, and he wasn’t much more prolific at Oxford - he’s only scored 16 goals in his entire career! And if he wants to play as one of two centre mids, which he says he does, it’s be nice to learn how to close down and tackle.

For that to be true, they would have to be paying a tax rate of 100% on profits elsewhere: losses are offset against profits, not the tax paid on profits. Plus there are plenty of ways to generate a loss in a P&L that don’t involve waving goodbye to cash. Cash flow and profit/loss are two very different things. For someone to keep losing this much cash, they must either be so rich they don’t notice/care (there are people who buy $200 million yachts and then don’t use them) or so proud they will never admit a mistake.

While it’s a mystery why they continue to find a chronically loss-making enterprise brought about entirely by their idiocy, there’s no mystery financial shenanigans behind it all IMO. These aren’t paper losses, this is cold hard negative cash flow - £180 million and counting has been sent over, given to BRFC mostly in exchange for worthless share certificates, and paid out to a massive cast of not good enoughs.